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Rhodes Island in one day

What you can do in an island in 1 day? Oh, so much stuff including going to beach, old town, ancient monuments, eating souvlaki etc. Read on to find out our one-day adventure in Rhodes Island, Greece.

How did we get there?

We got to Rhodes from Fethie, Turkey by boat for 2 hours. There’s also a shorter way from Marmaris, Turkey. So, we got our boat tour at 6 a.m and arrived to Rhodes at 8 a.m. Once we reached to the port we passed the passport control. If you are not EU citizen, make sure you get your visa before heading there. You can get visa in your home country or apply to Greek embassy in Turkey, if you are planning to cross the border from Turkey.

And once we arrived…

Here we go, the harbor is right at the Old Town and once you arrive to the port you will see the old gates and walls of Town. We were thinking weather to rent a car or take a taxi to see all the highlights in one day as there’s no public transportation in town, and we decided to take the city tour bus and walk between the stops. Believe me it was a right choice and I will tell you why 😉

The island is not so big so you can easily walk around. It was pretty hot in July to walk but hopping on and off the city tour bus helped us a lot to save our energy. We made one lap around the town in the bus listening to the guide and making notes where we should get off and on in the next round. Have you ever done like this before? We did for the first time and it worked out pretty well, because we calculated how long one round took and how much time we need to spend in each highlight to manage our time. We had time only by 5 PM and we turned on our time management skills 🙂 But if you have time you can easily hike from Old Town to most of the landmarks. It would take longer, but it’s worth of it!

Ok, guess where we stopped first? Of course, the beach! We didn’t want to miss enjoying the popular Elli town beach of Rhodes. It’s perfect if you don’t have any car or don’t have too much time to ride out of town to get to the beach. Elli beach was pretty crowded though it was 11 a.m. I was so happy to find free changing rooms on the beach, yeey! But if you want to use the toilet, you should pay 2 Euros for public one.

Elli beach, Rhodes

So, once we arrived we just changed our clothes and jumped into water. Lol, we even didn’t ask about getting umbrellas and deck chairs. If you don’t want to pay for beach equipment feel free to lay down on your beach towel. We were feeling so happy in crystal clear water with not waves that we didn’t want to waste our time laying on the beach. The water was just perfect! I highly recommend you to visit this beach.

Once we left the beach, we started walking along the seaside which had another beautiful beach. But it was pretty windy as this part of town is up on the hill and this beach is also windy with more waves. While being in this part of town you can visit aquarium which we didn’t do and unfortunately can’t give you any tips about it:).

View from Monte Smith

After exploring beach and the seaside we got on the bus and went to the view point on top of Monte Smith to see the whole beauty of blue Aegean Sea and coast line with Turkey. You should definitely see this view, one of the most beautiful I have ever seen! After watching this view, we walked down to ancient acropolis which dates back to III century BC. By the way, make sure you have water and some snacks with you as there’s no store or kiosk around. Walking around the acropolis we saw ruins of ancient Temple of Apollo. Right behind this temple you will find ancient stadium and amphitheater. The best part of it is that you don’t have to pay anything to see these pieces of ancient Greek culture. You will see so many ancient stones and ruins that you will feel like having the time machine.

Ancient amphitheater

After Acropolis we walked towards the Old Town. I highly recommend you walking in this part of town instead of taking the city tour bus or taxi. You will walk around the houses, will see limes, oranges on the tree, smell beautiful flowers and enjoy the hike. It took us around 30 min to reach to Old Town.

Old Town is another magical place which takes you to travel in history. It’s an old town surrounded by high medieval walls with 7 tremendous gates to enter the town. This is not a small ghost town, but vibrant and live place full of tourists, shops and restaurants. Stores in old narrow streets reminded me more Turkish bazaar than a Greek market. Later, I found out that Rhodes was occupied by Ottoman empire in XVI century and there was a huge influence of Turkish culture on town. There’s also a Suleiman Mosque built by Ottoman Empire and named after Sultan Suleiman who conquered Rhodes. The most popular street in Old Town is Knights street. There’s a historical fact that knights fought against Ottoman soldiers defending the town and there were around 2000 knights fell while Ottoman empire lost around 50K soldiers to conquer this town. You can imagine how strong the walls and gates were built and how well the defense was organized.

Old Town of Rhodes

While you walk in medieval streets of old town you still can feel the spirit of old life here. The tiny windows and balconies surrounded with flowers made me just fall in love with this town. We strolled around the old streets so much that we were already tired and run out of time to visit Lindos. Actually we found out that it would take us 3 hours to get to Lindos and 3 hours back. I wish we had one more day to visit white houses and beach of Lindos. May be this would make us to come back to Rhodes and spend more days here.

You can also check the story highlights at our Instagram account for more video and photos @ourlifeinasuitcase_by_sara

p.s. While walking in town we desperately looked for the statue of Colossus of Rhodes and got so disappointed for not finding it. Later on, we found out that this statue was destroyed in a powerful earthquake in III century when most of the town got damaged. That statue was almost the same height with current Statue of Liberty in NY. It was one of the world wonders of the ancient world!! So if you also think that, the statue is still there, don’t look for it :))) You can go to the harbor where the statue used to be like in photo below.

3 thoughts on “Rhodes Island in one day”

Wow, Rhodes Really beautiful Iceland to visit. wow, View from Monte Smith is amazing. Thanks to your post, I am very soon planning to visit Rhodes Iceland. As a digital nomad, I will stay for at least one month. Do you have any idea how much budget do I need for this ? I wanna sunbath in Elli beach and do surfing badly on Rhodes.
Thanks

omg one month in Rhodes sounds great! I wish I could spend their a whole month:))) it wouldn’t be cheap and depends where you will stay. Like, we payed 10 Euro per person for buffet breakfast, 20 Euro for City tour and around 30 euro for 2 souvlakis with water :))) Let’s say it would be twice less in Turkey, that’s why I felt like a bit expensive. Enjoy your stay!!